A massive uprising of black slaves broke out in French colony San Domingo (with late XVII V. the colony occupied western part O. Haiti, eastern continued to belong to Spain) under the leadership of the former slave Toussaint Louverture. The Spanish authorities in the eastern part of Haiti flirted with the rebels, hoping to use them to capture the French part of the island.

Toussaint Louverture

The Commissioners of the Convention, who arrived in San Domingo in 1794, proclaimed the abolition of slavery, but soon the British landed on the island. As a result of a stubborn four-year struggle, the remnants of the British troops were forced to evacuate from Haiti, Toussaint Louverture became the governor-general of the entire island (in 1795 Spain ceded its eastern part to France).

Napoleon Bonaparte, after seizing power in France on November 9, 1799, intended to create a colonial empire in America. Having secured the cession of Louisiana from Spain, he sent in 1802 to Haiti a 20,000-strong corps under the command of General Leclerc. Promising peace, the general lured Toussaint Louverture to a meeting and ordered the capture and exile of the Haitian leader to France, where he died in custody the following year.

Jean Jacques Dessalines

But under the leadership of Toussaint Louverture's ally, Jean Jacques Dessalines, the rebel army won a brilliant victory (in November 1803, out of 43 thousand French troops, only 8 thousand surviving soldiers left for their homeland, and even they were captured by the British fleet), and 1 January 1804, the independence of Haiti was proclaimed. The rebels received the French colonists.

The eastern part of the island remained in the hands of France, in 1808 this territory was returned to Spain, and in 1822 it was occupied by Haitian troops. After several unsuccessful attempts to restore its dominance, Paris in July 1825 recognized the independence of Haiti on the condition that compensation be paid for the expropriated property of the French planters.

In 1844, in the eastern part of the island, as a result of an anti-Haitian uprising, an independent state was formed - the Dominican Republic, which quickly fell under the financial and economic control of the United States. The peculiarity political development Republic of Haiti became a sharp internecine struggle for power.

Wars of independence of the Spanish colonies

The news of the defeat of the Spanish troops in the mother country and the occupation of most of Spain by the French interventionists became a signal for the beginning of an armed liberation struggle in various regions of Spanish America.

On April 19, 1810, a revolutionary junta (Spanish junta - “unification”, “union of a political nature”) seized power in Caracas, and on July 5, 1811, the National Congress convened by the junta proclaimed the independence of Venezuela and soon adopted a republican Constitution. However, the Indian population then did not receive equality and remained passive, and the leader of the uprising, Miranda, who promised freedom to the slaves who joined the Republican army, was captured by the Spanish troops, not having time to fulfill the promise.

Almost simultaneously with Venezuela, the revolutionary movement engulfed New Granada, in the capital of which, Bogotá, an uprising began on July 20, 1810, and in March 1811 the creation of the state of Cundinamarca was proclaimed. Its leadership advocated the unification of all the provinces of New Granada on a unitary basis, but met with resistance from local groups, which in November 1811 signed an act establishing the confederation of the United Provinces of New Granada with a center in Cartagena. With the support of the governments of both states, most of Venezuela was liberated from Spanish troops, and in August 1813 the 2nd Venezuelan Republic was created, headed by S. Bolívar. The municipality of Caracas awarded him the honorary title of "Liberator".

Simon Bolivar (1783-1830)

The leader of the struggle for the independence of the Spanish colonies in South America. In 1813, the National Congress of Venezuela proclaimed him a "liberator"; national hero of six countries in South America.

Born into a wealthy Creole family that owned numerous gold, silver and copper mines in Venezuela. He lost his parents early. Bolivar's teacher and older friend Simon Rodriguez had a decisive influence on the education and formation of Bolivar's views. “I am madly in love with this man,” Simon admitted, speaking of Rodriguez.

He was Bolivar's mentor for five years. When they met, the teacher was 20 years old, the student was 9; The student looked at the teacher with apprehension and respect. The Venezuelan educator Rodriguez was a follower of Rousseau and the French encyclopedists, whose ideas he enthusiastically spread among the colonists. From S. Rodriguez, young Bolivar learned for the first time about the traditions of the liberation struggle in the colonies.

Rodriguez introduced his student to the classics of antiquity, the ideas of French thinkers, many books that were in the library of Father Bolivar. The teacher spoke enthusiastically to his student about French Revolution. 1799-1806 Bolivar spent in Europe (Spain, France, Italy).

August 15, 1805 on the hill of Monte Sacro in Rome, in the presence of Rodriguez, vowed to fight for the liberation of South America from colonialism. Bolivar dreamed of creating a federal state like the United States on the territory of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.

On May 23, 1810, the patriotic Provisional Junta took power in Buenos Aires, the capital of the Viceroyalty of La Plata, but, as in the north, its attempts to subjugate the entire territory of the former Viceroyalty ran into resistance from individual provinces.

In Paraguay and Uruguay, radical-democratic federalist circles came to power, which were hostile to the landed aristocracy and large monastic landownership and headed for the creation of states independent of Buenos Aires.

In Chile, the Spanish administration was removed on September 18, 1810, but the junta that came to power did not dare to break completely with Spain. Taking advantage of this, the royalists transferred reinforcements from Peru and in October 1814 defeated the Chilean patriots and restored the colonial regime.

In Mexico, unlike other Spanish colonies, broad masses rose up to fight for independence under the leadership of the village priest Miguel Hidalgo. About 100 thousand rebels with knives and spears in September 1810 moved to Mexico City, sweeping away the landlord power in their path. Hidalgo did not dare to storm the capital of New Spain and moved towards Guadalajara. He decreed the emancipation of slaves, the abolition of the poll tax, the abolition of trade monopolies, and the return to the Indians of the lands taken from them. This forced the Creole nobility, who at first supported the uprising, to go over to the side of the colonialists, which made it easier to defeat the revolutionary army. But soon the patriots continued to fight under the leadership of a new leader, the son of a carpenter, José Morelos. On November 6, 1813, the National Congress convened on his initiative adopted the Declaration of Sovereignty and Independence of Mexico, and a year later, the first republican constitution in the history of the country.

Entities of independent states of Latin America

The restoration of the Bourbons in Spain in 1814, the dispatch of new Spanish troops to the Americas, and the split and divisions among the rebels led to the restoration, at the beginning of 1816, of the colonial regime in all of Latin America (with the exception of the La Plata region). The Tucuman Congress of the United Provinces of La Plata, which were grouped around Buenos Aires, unanimously proclaimed the independence of the country from Spain on July 9, 1816 (this day has become a national holiday of the Argentine people).

In early 1817, the liberation army under the command of José San Martin (1778-1850) crossed the Andes with incredible difficulty, defeated the numerically superior Spanish troops at the Battle of Chacabuco in Chile and entered Santiago. On February 12, 1818, in commemoration of the first anniversary of this victory, the independence of Chile was proclaimed.

The main center of Spanish rule in South America was in Peru, so in September 1820, the army of San Martin moved on ships to the Peruvian coast. With her approach, an uprising broke out there. After the liberation of Lima on July 28, 1821, San Martin proclaimed the independence of Peru and became the "protector" of the new state, implementing a series of reforms that strengthened the economic and military position of the country. Spanish troops only retained control over a small area in northern Peru.

S. Bolivar, having received assistance from the President of Haiti, Alexander Petin, during 1817-1818. cleared a significant part of Venezuela from Spanish troops, and in August 1819, having defeated the colonial army, he liberated New Granada. The success of Bolívar was facilitated by the abolition of slavery initiated by him and the decree on endowing the soldiers of the liberation army with land. In December 1819, Bolívar convened the Angostura Congress, which approved the "Basic Law of the Republic of Colombia" (in literature better known as Great Colombia), which provided for the unification of the territories of the former captaincy general of Venezuela, the viceroyalty of New Granada and the province of Quito into a federal state. Bolivar was elected its interim president, and already in May 1822 he completed the liberation of the coast of the Caribbean, Panama and Quito.

Bourgeois revolution 1820-1823 in Spain, it deprived Madrid of the opportunity to transfer new troops to America, it also forced large Mexican landowners and merchants, the military-bureaucratic elite, who were afraid of the liberal reforms carried out by the new Spanish government, to take the path of declaring independence.

The army under the command of Colonel Augustin Iturbide, who took an active part in punitive operations against the patriots, in September 1821 suddenly captured all the important centers of the country and entered Mexico City. The following year, Iturbide declared himself emperor under the name of Augustine I, but was soon forced to abdicate, and a republican system was established in Mexico, enshrined in the constitution of 1824. After the collapse of the Iturbide regime, the annexation of the captaincy general of Guatemala to Mexico was declared illegal, and on July 1, 1823, a federal state appeared - the United Provinces of Central America (since 1824 - the Federation of Central America), consisting of the states (provinces) of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador , Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Los Altos.

Since large contingents of Spanish troops remained in the mountainous part of Peru in the early 1820s, the question arose of their leadership. Secret negotiations in July 1822 in Guayaquil between Bolivar and San Martin revealed significant differences between the two leaders of the liberation movement on military and political issues. Shortly after these negotiations, San Martin voluntarily resigned political activity and emigrated to France, and Bolivar from September 1823 led military operations against the colonialists. On December 9, 1824, in the battle of Ayacucho, their last large grouping was defeated, and at the beginning of 1825, the patriots liberated all of upper Peru, which, after the declaration of independence, was named Bolivia in honor of Bolivar.

Simultaneously with the Spanish colonies, Portuguese Brazil also gained independence, where the liberation movement was slow and more local. Back in 1807, after the occupation of Portugal by Napoleonic troops, the regent João (later the Portuguese king João VI) fled to Rio de Janeiro with part of his army under the protection of the British fleet. This led to the liberalization of colonial legislation, in particular the opening of the Brazilian bank and the issuance of a decree on the freedom of enterprise in all industries.

In 1815, Brazil formally became an equal part of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve (southern Portugal). After victory bourgeois revolution in Portugal, João VI, at the request of the Cortes (class-representative assemblies), returned to his homeland in 1821, and his son Pedro remained regent in Brazil. The liberation movement under the slogan "Freedom or death!" spread throughout the country, which did not want to obey the Lisbon liberals. On September 7, 1822, Brazil was proclaimed an independent empire (until 1889). Although a new constitution was introduced in the country in 1824, Pedro I and his heirs did not reckon with it and ruled almost autocratically, relying on the army and slave-owning planters.

Thus, as a result of the War of Liberation, the colonial regime was abolished in all of Latin America, with the exception of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guiana, and the small island possessions of Britain and France in the Caribbean. During the war, new states appeared on the political map of the world: the United Mexican States, the Federation of Central America, Great Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, the United Provinces of La Plata (since 1826 - the Federal Republic of Argentina), Paraguay, the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, Brazil.

The liberation movement in these countries, with the exception of Brazil, was directed against absolutism and played the role of a bourgeois revolution. In these countries, a republican system was established, liberal-democratic constitutions were introduced; done away with trade monopolies, prohibitions and restrictions on entrepreneurial activity; the poll tax and labor service were abolished; liquidated the inquisition; slavery, titles of nobility and other attributes of feudalism have been abolished almost everywhere; active participants in the liberation struggle partially received land.

Collapse of the Colombian federation

In an effort to unite the Spanish-American states, Bolivar held a congress of their representatives in Panama (1826), but did not succeed. The creation of a Latin American federation ran into growing resistance from various factions and outright separatist movements. After the end of the liberation war, in contrast to his centralist policy, decentralization trends intensified in the region.

As a result of separatist actions, Bolivar remained in power in Peru and Bolivia (1827-1830). In 1828, the Bolivians rebelled against the President of Bolivia, an ally of Bolivar, General Antonio José de Sucre (1795-1830). At the beginning of 1830 he retired. After Bolívar's death in 1830, Great Colombia disintegrated into Venezuela, New Granada (Colombia), Ecuador.

The victory of the Latin American countries over Spain was also facilitated by the US policy declared in the Monroe Doctrine, which in 1823 proclaimed the principle of non-intervention European countries in American affairs, but later opened the way for US intervention in the affairs of Latin America.

S. Bolivar considered individual countries of the former Spanish America only as the first step towards the creation of a strong unified state, capable of standing on a par with the largest powers in the world. On his initiative, in the summer of 1826, representatives of the American states gathered in Panama to discuss common affairs, but the differences between them turned out to be stronger than the desire for unification, and Bolivar had to say goodbye to the dream of American unity.

S. Bolivar in 1826 on the situation in Great Colombia."The peoples who have passed through the fire of revolution and anarchy now demand with one voice an empire, because our reforms have proved their inability to do good and their unsuitability for the peoples of America."

Bolivar failed even to maintain the unity of Gran Colombia. As early as 1826, he admitted that "our reforms have proved their inability to do good and their unsuitability for the peoples of America." The despotic rule of Bolivar and his ideas about the welfare of the peoples largely diverged from their real aspirations, due to local conditions and the balance of power that prevailed in each individual country. Revolts against the "Liberator" began everywhere, it came to wars between new states, Venezuela and Ecuador separated from Colombia. Summing up his revolutionary activities, Bolivar wrote: “We are not allowed to rule America”, “this country will fall into the hands of unbridled crowds who will imperceptibly transfer it to the power of various tyrants”, and “if it is possible to admit, for some part of the world to fall back into primitive chaos, it will be America at the last stage of its history. In March 1830, Bolivar renounced power, and in December of the same year, after the final collapse of Great Colombia, he died.

The Creole revolutions that took place during the war of liberation were inspired by abstract liberal ideals and did not take into account the specific socio-economic situation that prevailed in each individual country. The countries of Spanish America were very different from each other in terms of natural conditions, population composition, and level of socio-economic development. However, the Creole elite that came to power pursued a policy that ignored local features and turned Spanish America into a victim of grandiose liberal experiments.

reforms

The catastrophic situation that prevailed in most countries of Spanish America forced the Creole elite to abandon liberalism, and during the 1830s. in many countries there was a turn to traditionalism.

The traditionalists realized that no people can cross out their own past and start writing their history from scratch, so any attempt to build new world, destroying the old to the ground, are doomed to failure. Traditionalists were looking for ways to develop independent nations based on the historical experience that was inherited from the colonial past. They advocated the strengthening of state power and its centralization; for protectionism in foreign trade and for encouraging domestic production.

Marchuk N.N. ::: History of Latin America from ancient times to the beginning of the 20th century

Topic 4.

The place of the countries of Latin America in the system of the international division of labor. Raw material export structure of the economy: types, system of production relations, main contradictions. Development of industry and the domestic market.

The impact of capitalist development on the ethnic and class structure of Latin American societies.

class contradictions in late XIX early 20th century

Liberal-oligarchic state in Latin America.

Economy. Liberal reforms laid the foundations for the integration of Latin American countries into the world economy as suppliers of mineral raw materials and agricultural products, as well as a market for industrial products and a sphere for investing capital from the leading powers of Europe and North America. Although the chosen development model doomed the continent to the position of an agrarian and raw materials periphery, by the beginning of the 20th century. it also provided obvious successes. If by 1900 the number of its inhabitants increased to 63 million people and amounted to 4.1% of the world's population, then the share of the continent in the world trade turnover increased to 79%. At the same time, natural, climatic and demographic features led to the formation of three main types of raw materials export economy in the region, which gave different results.

Euro-America, and above all Argentina and Uruguay, went further along the path resettlement capitalism like USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. According to the principle comparative advantage", these countries received high incomes from the sale of livestock and agricultural products on the world market. At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, they moved into the ranks of world leaders in terms of economic growth (5.5%), and by 1920 in terms of per capita level income By 1914, Argentina, whose population did not reach 8 million people, had 26 million head of cattle (3rd place in the world after the USA and Russia), 67 million sheep (2nd after Australia) , ranked 1st in the export of beef and corn, 4th in the export of wheat (16% of world exports) and the length of railways (33 thousand km), etc. American capital occupied the leading positions in the meat-packing industry of Argentina and Uruguay as the owner of advanced technology in this industry. But the main trading partner, creditor and "donor" of investments for them was not the United States, their competitor on the world market, but England and other powers of Western Europe. From there, millions of immigrants poured into their population, bringing in these countries not only the purity of the white race, but also advanced technical and humanitarian knowledge, high level education and culture.

afro america (Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba and other Caribbean countries), along with other areas of the tropics and subtropics, as before, joined the new world market as exporters of products tropical farming. Since England and France were the largest owners of colonies in the same zone, the main partner, creditor and "donor" of this group of countries, with the exception of Brazil, was the United States. In general, this group also had high growth rates. In Brazil, for example, in 1876-1913. they averaged 3.2% per year. By the beginning of the XX century. this group occupied a leading position in the world export of a number of crops: Brazil for coffee (75%), Cuba with a population of 3 million people for sugar (20%), the countries of Central America became "banana republics", etc.

Yet these countries were less dynamic, as advanced European technology offered little to their plantation economy, in the world market they had to compete with many colonies in Asia and Africa, and the consequences of world price fluctuations were more painfully felt. They lagged behind Euro-America in terms of the length of the railway network (even Brazil, which was three times larger than Argentina in terms of territory and population, was inferior to it in this indicator in 1914, having 21 thousand km), in terms of the share of European immigrants, literacy of the population, and many others. characteristics.

Mining export economy It developed mainly in Indo-America in Peru, the "tin republic" of Bolivia, and also Mexico, where it coexisted with both cattle breeding and export tropical agriculture. Although Chile adjoined the countries of resettlement capitalism, being a major exporter of wheat since the middle of the 19th century, it simultaneously developed the mining industry, becoming first the world leader in the export of copper, and from the end of the 19th century. and saltpeter. Later, such an economy was supplemented by oil production, and Venezuela, the largest oil exporter on the continent, was among the producing countries.

This group of countries also showed high average development indicators. So, if in 1890 tin mining in Bolivia was 1 thousand tons, then in 1905 it was already 15 thousand tons, and by 1914 it became the second tin-producing country in the world, giving 20% ​​of the world production of this metal. In Chile, in 1892, the export of saltpeter was only 300 thousand tons, and in 1906 it was already 11,600 thousand tons. The value of all exports, which, in addition to saltpeter, included copper, gold, silver, lead, iron, coal and manganese, increased over the same period from 29 to 580 million pesos.

However, the development of the subsoil required large investments and advanced technology, and their monopoly holders of England and the United States, in conditions of free competition, easily took over the mining of Latin America, displacing or integrating local capital into their structures. These monopolies enjoyed the right of extraterritoriality, i.e. not subject to local laws. They freely exported their profits abroad, imported everything necessary for the development of subsoil from abroad, required a relatively small local labor force, created a network of highly specialized railways that were by no means suitable for any kind of cargo transportation. Therefore, the extractive industries turned into foreign enclaves that contributed little to the country's economy as a whole (only relatively small tax revenues). As a result, the country could have the richest subsoil, while remaining poor.

Society. The system of production relations of post-reform Latin America was distinguished by an extremely high concentration of means of production in the hands of raw materials export oligarchy, as, for example, in Mexico, where by 1910 over 90% of the rural population was completely deprived of land. Although since the end of the XIX century. the identification of the oligarchy with "feudal" latifundism has become an integral element of the political culture on the continent, the oligarchy did not represent the latifundists, but the cream of the local bourgeoisie as a whole, integrated into the world economy and intertwined, including family ties, mining, industrial, land and trade and financial magnates . Even the latifundists were by no means only landowners: for example, in Chile, out of 46 chairmen of the latifundist National Society of Agriculture from 1838 to 1930, 15 were presidents of banks, 16 were directors of industrial, commercial and mining companies.

The relations of the local oligarchy with foreign monopolies were not always hospitable. Nevertheless, both of them were united by a common interest in the raw materials export orientation of the continent, which allows us to consider them as a single dominant and ruling bloc. Many European immigrants joined the oligarchy, especially in the zone of "settlement capitalism." So, for example, in Uruguay in 1871, among the founders of the latifundist Agrarian Association, there were pure foreigners, i.e. excluding their descendants born in the country, amounted to 32%. In Guatemala, German colonists, mostly descendants of settlers from the period from 1860 to 1870, made up only about 1% of the country's total landowners. However, they owned up to 48% of all large land holdings in the country, which gave up to 60% of all coffee harvested in Guatemala.

As regards the nationality of the monopolies, the undisputed superiority was held by England, which in 1914 accounted for 49% of the $10 billion in foreign investment in Latin America. This was followed by the monopolies of the USA (17%), France (12%), Germany (9%), etc.

Impressive economic progress at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. was achieved through expropriation and a sharp deterioration in the standard of living of the vast majority of the population. Wage by the beginning of the 20th century, urban and rural workers amounted to half of the level of the middle of the 19th century. Typical phenomena were a 14-18-hour working day, the most difficult working conditions even for women and adolescents, high mortality of the population, especially children, the issuance of wages not in cash, but in bonds, which were accepted only in the patron's shop. Debt bondage and even corporal punishment of workers flourished in the post-reform countryside.

State. Civil society in Latin America remained extremely elitist. Through the filters of residence, property and educational qualifications to the exercise of the right to vote at the beginning of the 20th century. infiltrated 9% of the population in Argentina, 5% in Uruguay, 3% each in Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador. But even with such an electorate, forgery and fraud in elections or coup d'état were widely practiced. integral features of the post-revolutionary liberal state also began the restoration of de facto centralism and such hypertrophy executive power that this state was most often embodied in the odious dictatorships of Porfirio Diaz in Mexico 1876-1911. ("porfiriato"), Guzman Blanco ("gusmanato" 1870-1888) or Vicente Gomez (1909-1935) in Venezuela, Rafael Nunez in Colombia (1880-1894), Estrada Cabrera in Guatemala (1898-1920) and others .

The abyss that separated the social and political realities of post-reform Latin America from the not-yet-forgotten slogans and promises of the liberal revolutionaries prompts historians to portray the case as if the oligarchy that crept into power either perverted the ideals of liberalism (and therefore the term "liberal state" is supplemented with the term "oligarchic" ), or introduced something directly opposite to it (in Mexico it even became a tradition to fence off the "bad" liberal P. Diaz from the "good" leader of the Reform of 1854-1867 B. Juarez with a Chinese wall).

However, as mentioned above, even in Europe, where the old liberal principles of the Enlightenment under the influence of positivism had undergone significant changes by that time, the central place in the priorities of the state was taken not by the individual, but by society. Especially in Latin America, where the free play of market forces had to be created rather than guarded. with an iron hand, the state could not serve only "man and citizen." It was supposed to become and indeed became the axis of social development: it distributed property and credits, conducted public works, suppressed peasant unrest, labor strikes, uprisings of provincial caudillos, in a word, provided order and stability in the name of progress.

The positivist formula "Order and progress!", turned into the motto of the post-revolutionary state, removed many of the old contradictions between liberals and conservatives. Therefore, the liberals themselves, as in Bolivia in 1889-1920, and the conservatives, as in Argentina at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, could put the formula into practice. But most often this was done by associations of liberals and conservatives, either through coalition governments, as in Chile of 1861-1876, or through the formation of a new united party, like the National Party in Colombia in the era of R. Nunez. The most successful and lasting association of both was the Liberal Union of Mexico, created in 1892 by Diaz, which, due to frequent references to a positivist attitude towards the special sciences, is better known as the "sientificos" ("scientists") grouping. Headed by H.I. Limantour, Díaz's finance minister, the Liberal Union acted as a technocratic elite, pioneering Mexico's progress but also the architect of Latin America's most notorious dictatorial regime.

General History [Civilization. Modern Concepts. Facts, events] Dmitrieva Olga Vladimirovna

Latin America at the turn of the century

The main trends in the socio-economic and political development of Latin American countries at the beginning of the century

During the time that has passed since independence, the countries of Latin America have made significant progress in their socio-economic development. By the beginning of the 20th century, this vast region presented a very mixed picture. Along with huge, poorly developed, and even simply unexplored areas (the Amazon basin, Patagonia), large industrial centers arose - Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Sao Paulo. Back in the last third of the 19th century, the most developed countries of Latin America - Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay - entered the phase of an industrial revolution and by the beginning of the century had already laid the foundation for their industrial potential. It is important to emphasize that from the very beginning these countries were actively integrated into a single world economic complex.

A characteristic feature of the development of even the most economically advanced countries of Latin America was that new socio-economic structures not only replaced the old ones, but gradually integrated them into their orbit. This facilitated and accelerated the pace of bourgeois progress. But there was also a reverse side of the coin: this feature of the socio-economic development of Latin America gave rise to an unusual vitality of the integrated elements of traditional structures within the new ones. In the economies of these countries, the multistructural structure was firmly entrenched, and this, in turn, increased the contradictory nature of the evolution of Latin American society.

This inconsistency was most fully manifested in the development of the agricultural sector. The main economic unit there was still latifundia, whose owners owned about 80% of all cultivated land in the leading countries of Latin America. However, integration into a single world economic complex stimulated the transformation of these farms. The market dictated its conditions, and this dictate turned into the fact that Agriculture became monocultural. For example, Argentina became the largest supplier of grain and meat, Brazil and Colombia - coffee, Cuba - sugar, Bolivia - tin, Venezuela - oil, etc. This seriously hampered the development of the domestic market.

The turn of the 19th–20th centuries was marked by a sharp intensification of the penetration of foreign capital into the economy of this region. Foreign investments accelerated its development, contributed to the introduction of advanced forms of organization industrial production. But along with undoubted advantages, the introduction of foreign capital into the economies of Latin American countries also had negative consequences: this increased disproportions in the development of the national economy of these countries.

In the 19th century, England was the leader in terms of the amount of investments invested in the economies of Latin American countries. However, since the end of the century, Germany and especially the United States have become more active in this field. The United States already had a fairly strong foothold in Mexico and the Caribbean. After the Spanish-American War of 1898, they essentially annexed Puerto Rico and established almost complete control over formally independent Cuba. Great importance in the plans of the United States was given to the Panama Canal, opened in August 1914. This event radically changed the entire dynamics of economic ties in this region.

To characterize the type of states that have developed as a result of specific relations between the United States and the countries of Central America, they began to use a special term - "banana republics", that is, formally legally independent states, in fact, completely dependent on the scale of exports to the United States of tropical crops grown in these countries. Using the ideas of Pan-Americanism, the United States tried to present itself as the spokesman for the interests and aspirations of the entire population of the New World.

The nature of the development of Latin American society was greatly influenced by the complex ethnic processes that unfolded in its body. The interaction of different cultures and traditions - Indian, Negro, European - led to the formation of very peculiar and colorful ethnopsychological communities in these countries. All this, in turn, affected the nature of political culture, the specifics of the entire political process. The unstable state of Latin American society, a peculiar political culture, multiplied by an abundance of intricate socio-economic problems, gave rise to high instability political systems countries of Latin America, frequent coups d'etat, uprisings, revolutions, determined the great role of violence and illegitimate means of political struggle. In most countries, authoritarian regimes were in power, relying on the army. In political struggle, in mass popular movements, their participants, as a rule, united not around some programs, slogans or demands, but around leaders - caudillo (leader).

If in Europe and North America the foundations of civil society had already taken shape by that time, in Latin America, even in the most developed countries, this was still far away. Although formally there were republican institutions, there were constitutions, often written off from a similar document in force in the United States, one could speak of democracy in Latin America only as a form that covered the authoritarian domination of local elites.

At the very end of the 19th century, socialist ideas began to penetrate Latin America. The first Latin American country where a socialist party arose was Argentina (1896). Then similar parties appeared in Chile and Uruguay. Just as in Southern Europe, in Latin America anarchists confidently competed with the socialists, whose ideas and tactics appealed to the lower classes of Latin American society. It is characteristic that precisely those countries where socialist parties arose were leaders in the process of the formation of civil society and the formation of a democratic political system.

It was a very contradictory process in which conservative, liberal-reformist and revolutionary tendencies were bizarrely intertwined. IN different countries their ratio was not the same, but it was their resultant that determined the general dynamics of the development of Latin American society. If liberal-reformist tendencies, with certain reservations, determined the dynamics of the development of Chile, Uruguay, and partly Argentina, conservative-protective tendencies dominated the "banana republics" of Central America, the Caribbean islands, Venezuela, then Mexico became the clearest embodiment of the revolutionary trend in the development of society, where in 1910, the largest and most profound revolutionary uprising in Latin America in the first half of the 20th century broke out.

From the book The Truth about Nicholas I. The slandered emperor author Tyurin Alexander

Historical analogies. Latin America I think it is appropriate to draw a parallel between the hypothetical "Decembrist Russia" and Latin America in the 1810s and 1820s. There, the local oligarchy, almost entirely Masonic, freed itself from the power of the Spanish monarch and formed one and a half

From the book History of World Civilizations author Fortunatov Vladimir Valentinovich

§ 8. Latin America in the XX century. By the beginning of the XX century. all 20 Latin American states became republics. Spanish is spoken in 18 countries. In Brazil they speak Portuguese, and in Haiti they speak French. Back in the 70s and 80s. 19th century Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico and Brazil

From the book History of Modern Times. Renaissance author Nefedov Sergey Alexandrovich

LATIN AMERICA Latin America was a country of settlers who spoke Latin languages- Spaniards and Portuguese. The great discovery of Columbus gave the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula the most beautiful country in the world - and everyone who first visited this country was

author Team of authors

§ 12 Latin America in the 16th - early 19th centuries. "Pre-Columbian civilizations" and the beginning of the Conquest New World - America, as part of the world formed by two continents - North and South America, at the turn of the XV-XVI centuries. on a number of parameters significantly differed from the Old World.

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From book The World History: in 6 volumes. Volume 4: The World in the 18th Century author Team of authors

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From the book History of State and Law of Foreign Countries. Part 2 author Krasheninnikova Nina Alexandrovna

From the book The Rise of China author Medvedev Roy Alexandrovich

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From the book World History: in 6 volumes. Volume 5: The World in the 19th Century author Team of authors

Latin America: A Century of Independence The revolutionary events of 1808 in the mother country served as a direct impetus to the rise of the liberation movement in the Spanish colonies. The invasion of French troops in Spain and the passivity of the authorities caused an outburst of indignation in the country.

author Shuler Jules

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USA and Latin America. USA 1991, December. The USA became the first state with which Belarus established diplomatic relations. In the process of withdrawing nuclear weapons from Belarus, the Russian Federation - Russian Federation(Eastern part of Rus'), USA and UK signed

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Latin America. Cuba 2006, April. A delegation headed by Sergei Sidorsky arrived in Cuba from Belarus. Belarus supplies to Cuba: all-terrain vehicles (“tractors”) “Belarus”, “MAZs”, “BelAZs” and refrigerators “Minsk”. For 50 years, Cuba has been blockaded by a sect